Anxiety ?

[MissPennyLane]

I have a question about smoking pot and anxiety attacks. Long story short i used to do alot of **** for like 2 years and i smoked everyday without a problem. I got sober and now everytime i try to smoke it freaks me out and gives me anxiety attacks and i feel like i cant breathe normally and like my heart is racing and pounding and i feel all weird. but ever since i got off the other shit i have had anxiety attacks anyway whether i smoke or not and i was gonna go to the doctor tuesday to get a card because i have anxiety and i hate taking pills of any kind, but im scared to smoke because i have heard that pot induces panic attacks. Is there a strain out there that i can smoke with out it freaking me out? i want to be able to smoke again and if it takes away my anxiety that i get regularly then that would be awesome too. If someone could answer this i would be grateful i have been wondering about this for a while.

 

[greenmonkey]

ive seen a few friends freak out after smokin a lot. if you toke too much weed itll put you in a different place altogether. the reason being smoking gets the chemicals to your brain much faster, and the sudden change can freak ya out. nothin like smokin a fat blunt and trippin over yourself.
how good is the herb youve got and how much do you smoke at a time?
but if smoking is too much you can always bake up some brownies. always great to get baked out without smokin.

 

[Smokin Moose]

Try low doses of the indicas if you are concerned about anxiety attacks. In my experience, the sativas can sometimes have this effect on smokers.

 

[MissPennyLane]

i only took a couple hits and it freaked me out it was a several months ago when i was trying to get back on my feet and smoke again. I generally used to love sativas because they make you laugh and have a great time. will med pot fix my problem or is this a chemical imbalance due to the other drugs i was doing which some of my friends say is non reversable , thanks for responding.

 

[FelixTheKwat]

As previous posts suggest, I would recommend a Indica strain over sativa to counteract the anxiety - if smoking it still doesnt help, try baking it into some brownies or even making some cannibutter.

when THC is ingested your heartrate wont increase dramaticlly the way it does when you smoke and this may also help to counteract the anxiety.
good luck in your quest, I hope this helps

 

[MissPennyLane]

thanks for the info. i read somewhere that after smokin within the 1st or 2nd hour that your at risk for a heart attack is that even somewhat true? i have a mitrovalve defect. i found that info on a post somewhere around here.

 

[FreakNature]

You need to talk to a doctor; preferably one that is aware of the medical benefits of cannabis.

 

[AlexTheStoner]

I'm in the same boat as you. I have been having anxiety attacks lately also and I've noticed that sativas do seem to bring them on, so i have been sticking to the indicas and no there have been no problems so far. I went to the doctor after about a month of having these and like i thought, he prescribed me some medications which i hate taking. Try getting your hands on some indica and it might just relax and calm you down as it does for me. Good luck

 

[GanjaMan417]

Try low doses of the indicas if you are concerned about anxiety attacks. In my experience, the sativas can sometimes have this effect on smokers.

Moose is definatly on the dot with this.. I stopped smoking for about 4 months because of aniexty I've started back up again just smoking a little bit at a time.. definatly don't overdue it and especially on sativas.. I've always been more of a fan of indicas so it worked out better for me.. anyways from my personal experience sativas and smoking too much or taking a break and then smoking a lot brings on aniexty attacks.. you should be alright man

 

[Blob]

I'm going to go against some of the people here and recommend that you DON'T eat weed if smoking it is giving you anxiety attacks. When you eat it, your body metabolizes the delta-9-thc into delta-11-thc which is much more psychoactive. I have to be careful how much I smoke at once because I am also susceptible to anxiety attacks, and eating weed pretty much guarantees me a bad time.

I have heard that strawberry cough has anti-anxiety properties, but I have never tried it. Maybe you could hunt some down and give it a shot.

 

[MissPennyLane]

thanks everyone im going to the weed doc today so we will see how well this goes...and if anyone knows anything thing else let me know,thanks for all of the info.

 

[beensmokin420]

For indica's keep is KUSH, very simple. Cali has some of the best kush in the world right now, just gotta know where to find it. Good Luck and do remember how lucky you actually are to be able to goto "the weed doc"! I'd almost kill to have those rights in my state.

 

[Waterfall]

Like a lot of you, I stopped for a while. When I started smoking again I felt that anxiety. HORRIBLE feeling. I was getting it off of Kush though. I started taking like 1/2 of a hit and not holding it in at all. That did the trick. I think it was my body, which had not had smoke in about 2 years, trying to fight the newly introduced toxins...lol

 

[G-fer1973]

Been there done that. I found that if I pace myself, I'll find my happy place & it's Have u noticed that when u'r heart starts pounding & u feel like u can't breathe u're probally pretty damned high! Start w/ a nice calm relaxing buzz & build your tolerance back up. If u have another 1 try splashing some cool water on u'r face & focus on u'r breathing, get some fresh air, find something to focus on & keep focusing on u'r breathing, it'll get better, it did 4 me anyway. Good luck.

 

[J842P]

ive seen a few friends freak out after smokin a lot. if you toke too much weed itll put you in a different place altogether. the reason being smoking gets the chemicals to your brain much faster, and the sudden change can freak ya out. nothin like smokin a fat blunt and trippin over yourself.
how good is the herb youve got and how much do you smoke at a time?
but if smoking is too much you can always bake up some brownies. always great to get baked out without smokin.

This is probably a bad idea if you want to help her anxiety. I'm not sure, but I'll tell you why I think so and hopefully it will help PennyLane get started in understanding the relationship between pot and anxiety attacks. This was an issue for me that ended up resolving itself but in the mean time I did some reading about the subject. Apparently, when you ingest (delta-9)THC you end up getting greater quantities of certain metabolites than if you would have smoked it, particularly 11-hydroxy-THC which is apparently MORE psychoactive than regular THC. 11-hydroxy THC has been reported to cause anxiety and may be the reason people get "paranoid" when they are high. I haven't been able to verify that eating pot versus smoking it does in fact result in more 11-hydroxy-THC than smoking. It is a statement that is made on both sides of the spectrum, so I assume that it is grounded in truth but I have not read any published studies that indicate so (I find that the only way to get any real information on cannabis that isn't spun one way or another is to check out the actual research). I might not have looked hard enough, remeber, the issue resolved itself for me.

Anyway, as for strains you should try, look out for strains that produce more cannabidiol, i.e. CBD, because this particular isomer (something with a similar chemical structure) of THC has shown to have anti-anxiety effects ( I suggest people read up about cannabidiol because it may in fact be responsible for much of the cannabis plants therapeutic potential). Check out its wikipedia page for more general info. Growers, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't cannabis indica produce more CBD? Perhaps you (that is, MissPennyLane) should try indica-dominant strains, but I don't really know much about cannabis horticulture or botany so I shouldn't be talking.

Please realize that I may be unintentionally providing you with false or misleading information, because, as I have already alluded to, most of this information was gleaned from reading wikis and other such unreliable sources (especially considering that cannabis is a politically charged issue) so please take everything with a grain of salt and do some research for yourself. Knowledge is power!

I should probably also recommend that if you are getting anxiety attacks from smoking weed, or if smoking weed has made your anxiety attacks worse some how, then you should cut back or stop smoking completely if you can't resolve the issue. Ask yourself if it's really worth it if all that happens to you is feeling shitty. I don't like doing things that make me feel shitty.

 

[J842P]

Been there done that. I found that if I pace myself, I'll find my happy place & it's Have u noticed that when u'r heart starts pounding & u feel like u can't breathe u're probally pretty damned high! Start w/ a nice calm relaxing buzz & build your tolerance back up. If u have another 1 try splashing some cool water on u'r face & focus on u'r breathing, get some fresh air, find something to focus on & keep focusing on u'r breathing, it'll get better, it did 4 me anyway. Good luck.

Yeah, I also feel like when my heart starts pounding that breathing is the best thing I can do. Also, for some reason I'm really sensitive to being cold when I'm high.

 

[J842P]

The tachycardia (rapid beating of the heart) is associated with THC in general, regardless of the ingestion method. In fact, eating may even cause more anxiety like effects (which would probably include tachycardia) as a couple of us have explained here.

 

[Smokin Moose]

This has been an informative thread